With its techno tunes and stylised appearance, Wipeout brought designer credibility to the PlayStation. This helped transfer the console from bedroom to living room and mainstream gaming was born.

Undoubtedly influenced by this, Trickstyle uses a similar futuristic aesthetic to flesh out its hover-board action. In a thousand years these souped-up skateboards will be the transport of choice for the discerning hipster and it's up to you to race through London, Tokyo and New York.

Actually "race" is a slightly misleading term, as the main route to victory is not pure velocity but rather excessive stunt pulling. This will frustrate the speed freaks but please 1080 fans as, like Nintendo's classic, there is a real sense of proper physics.

In fact things get a bit too realistic at times. With little margin for error any split second mistake causes your board to lose speed dramatically. Still at least when you slow down you can admire the scenery that, once again, makes you glad you splashed out on the Dreamcast.

Skyscrapers, Big Ben and wonderful lighting effects accompany you during the action, although the futuristic urban look is a cliché.

Good looking or not, Trickstyle offers a frustratingly tough challenge which may or may not appeal to the mass market. Those with limited attention spans will switch off long before mastering the subtle controls. Those who stick with it will have enjoyed and endured in equal measure which says something about a pleasingly original title.

All the fun of the fair

Theme Park World Windows 95/98, £39.99 Bullfrog/Electronic Arts

Sometimes a game will have a feature that's so cool it overrides everything else. In Theme Park World - known in the US as SimTheme Park - that feature is the ability to cruise around your park and enjoy the rides. Instead of viewing your construction from aloft, as is common in "god games", you can get down to ground level and see what the punters see.

Or would see, if they were people rather than graphical constructs.

In most respects, Theme Park World is just the old Theme Park in better 3D graphics. The main difference is that Theme Park had only one world, whereas TPW has four. To begin with, you can start in a Wild Jungle or Halloween land. If you earn enough golden keys, you can access the Surreal Fantasy and Outer Space lands. It's a bit limited compared with the number of scenarios provided with Hasbro's Roller Coaster Tycoon, but more may follow.

Most obviously, TPW features a pop-up adviser who provides a running commentary on how to play the game. It's useful and done in a pleasant Scottish voice, but after a couple of hours you feel like terminating the damn thing with extreme prejudice.

The on-off switch isn't good enough: there should be options, such as Terse and Verbose, so you can cut out the constant repetitions without losing useful messages.

Another significant difference, according to publisher Electronic Arts, is that you will be able to publish your theme parks online ( www. themeparkworld.com ). You can also explore other people's parks - including some created by the programmers at Bullfrog in Guildford - and nick their ideas.

Unfortunately, my installation of TPW crashed repeatedly without warning and didn't save games, even though it claimed to.

Since there hasn't been a national outcry, the version that's just reached the shops presumably doesn't suffer from similar problems.

The spy who vexed me

Tomorrow Never Dies PlayStation/PC CD-rom Black Ops

Bond fans rejoice: you no longer have to own an N64 to play 007. And this is no Goldeneye clone; for a start, it's third person rather than first. And while you can, if you choose, sneak around and pick people off in sniper mode, Black Ops has ensured that a rather more appropriate guns-blazing approach is just as viable.

TND is also more than just a shoot-'em-up. As well as some basic puzzling, usually involving gadgets like mines, magnetic cufflinks and spy cameras, skiing and driving sequences keep the gameplay nicely varied. The missions are all based on scenes from the film, and in the neatest touch of all, on completing the first level you're treated to the movie's title sequence, complete with caterwauling Sheryl Crow and gyrating girlies.

Sadly, the execution doesn't quite match the developers' intentions. An erratic interface means even walking straight can be problematic, it's often difficult to see where the baddies are coming from, and the endless variations on the Bond theme soon become a drag.

And with 10 missions, no multiplayer option and only two difficulty settings, your tux could be back at the dry-cleaner's before the day is out.